Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pulling out the charcuterie board I picked up on the way home from the hospital last night, I close the refrigerator’s door with my hip.
I’m a little low on beer, but typically, someone shows up with additional drinks of some sort.
We also don’t usually have poker night on a Saturday afternoon, but this week has been anything but typical.
The few texting conversations with Harlow have been one of the only bright spots.
Getting together with my brothers for poker is always a good time, and maybe after the insanity of this week, it will be a dose of normalcy we all need.
After everything that’s happened in the last few days, we all agreed to move the game up to Saturday afternoon, so Savannah and Vivian can hang out down the road at Dad’s with their girls and we can play poker—or give Theo a place to tell us what he really thinks about the asshole who’s stalking my sister.
I’m more than happy to host poker nights, or afternoons, in my home.
I love this house so damn much, especially now that it’s fully mine, and can’t imagine calling any other place home.
My dad grew up in this house, and after our grandparents passed, he inherited it as the only living child, but he didn’t have a use for it and couldn’t bring himself to sell it, so it sat empty for a few years.
Until I asked if I could buy it.
“And is it your dream to live in a dusty old farmhouse?” Mama asks with a gleam in her eyes.
I asked to have dinner with them tonight, just the three of us, which raised all kinds of alarms for my parents, but I didn’t want an audience for this conversation.
Plus, any time I can get Mama to make her fried chicken, and I don’t have to fight one of my brothers for seconds, it’s always a win for me.
“No, but I thought if you were open to the idea, I could buy it from you then have Finn totally renovate it.” I glance between my parents, not sure how my dad will react to the news that I want to gut his childhood home.
But instead of being upset, Dad’s booming laugh fills the room. “Really? You want to renovate that and put down roots a mile down the road from us?”
“Murph, hush. I think it’s a wonderful idea.
It’s not like there’s any life in it right now.
It could be a new era for the property and still keep it in the family.
Honestly, Ry, I think it’s a wonderful idea.
” Mama reaches over and squeezes Dad’s hand with an encouraging smile.
She is not subtle in how happy it would make her to have me close again—in fact, I think she’d prefer to have all of us within a mile of their house.
Jack is all over the place, but mostly splits his time between Nashville, New York, and London.
Liam is … well, I don’t know that he has a technical home so much as a handful of home bases he moves between.
I know more than some suspect—he is my brother—but working for the Agency means I know very little about his actual life, only that something has shifted in the last year or two.
He doesn’t seem as fulfilled as he once was with whatever the hell it is that he does.
Savannah and her husband live in Nashville, but I know after she had her second baby last year, she’s on Mama’s team of finding a way for them to move to Forrest Falls, just not sure her husband Shane is ready for that move.
But Nashville is closer than Washington D.C.
, where our baby sister is a corporate attorney and lives with her new husband, who is an internal medicine resident.
I still can’t believe Vivian and Trent got married last month, but she seems happy, for the most part.
At the wedding, Trent mentioned hoping to match into a cardiology fellowship, which would mean moving to Chicago next year, but that would at least bring them a few hundred miles closer.
Finn is the only one that came right back to Forrest Falls after college. He has always made it clear that this was home, and I agree. I’ve been in Nashville while finishing my MBA, but the plan was to move back to Forrest Falls eventually—if the right job was available.
“Would it help seal the deal if I tell you that this morning, I accepted the offer, and you’re looking at the new Chief Financial Officer of Forrest Falls Hospital come July first?”
My mother’s squeal bounces off their dining room walls as she jumps up from her chair, while Dad slowly stands to wait for his turn to hug me.
“Way to bury the lead, Ryan. If it means you moving home, you know I’d do just about anything to support that,” Dad admits as he squeezes my shoulder.
“I don’t need all the land, and honestly, if you want to sell all the land, I may need a little more time to figure out the financial aspects of everything.”
“You could talk to Jack,” Mama offers.
I shake my head. I could talk to my oldest brother, but I won’t.
Would he help me in a heartbeat? Yes.
But Jack always has people asking things of him, and if I can figure this out, I really want to do it on my own.
“Have you talked to Finn about this? I bet he’s chomping at the bit to get started,” Mama adds with a massive grin while she sits back down in her chair on the other side of the dining table.
“Not specifically about that house, but in a broad conceptual idea, yes.” Finn started designing and building homes while he was still in college and is an exceptional carpenter with his own residential construction company.
He hasn’t done a large-scale renovation like this, but he has the ability to bring an old-world charm to his new builds, so I have all the faith that he can do this—and no builder will care as much about the property as one of us.
He’s also told me he’d like to be able to add this service to his business, so really, it helps both of us.
I get a home that I already love, and Finn gets to give that property new life.
And Mama gets one more of her babies moving home.
From the outside, it looks like a 1920s farmhouse, but when Finn got his hands on it after I bought it from our parents, he completely updated the inside.
Walls were removed, relocated, and everything was taken down to the studs.
Finn managed to find a balance between the industrial-modern style I like and the charming vibes of the house’s history.
There were originally four rooms that made up the main floor which we opened up to create better flow—and room for the big ass island in the middle of my kitchen.
The main living space flows into an open dining room and hearth area with a large stone fireplace, and bright LED Edison bulb light fixtures flood the interior with a warm glow, and it’s chilly enough lately to justify having the fireplace on.
The poker table is on my covered deck, and I have the fireplace going out there, too.
My primary suite was an addition off the side of the house, and upstairs includes four guest bedrooms, although it’s usually just one that gets used, and only by Liam when he is passing through.
It’s a lot of space for a bachelor, but it’s a home, and if it’s going to be the home for my family one day, I wanted it done right.
Despite what some people think, there is a right way to do everything, and if that’s an option, that’s the route I go.
I understand—after plenty of therapy—that my need for order and safety is all rooted in my greatest regret.
Logically, I know that it was an accident Finn fell out of the tree when I was supposed to be watching him while Mama went upstairs to put Vivi down for her nap.
I should have kept a closer eye on him, but Finn has always been rambunctious.
I didn’t even know he went out the back door and climbed the damn tree until I heard him crying after he fell out of it.
I was eight years old when I failed him, and it resulted in not only a broken arm, but Finn required surgery and pins above his elbow to place the break. He was only six years old.
Shaking off the memory, I hear the front door open as my brothers start to arrive. I don’t know what we can really do to help Theo, but I know that while they are trying to keep it together for the sake of the girls, he is fucking pissed.
And I don’t blame him, because the entire Cavalry is pissed at this recent bullshit.
After dropping her girls off at school and going to a Pilates class, Savannah came home to shower—only to discover that someone had not only somehow gotten into her house, but they had also used some kind of blade or knife on the feather pillows on her bed, slashing them open and leaving puffs of downy stuffing everywhere.
If that wasn’t creepy enough, the asshole went through the drawers of her underwear and bras, and apparently, some of it is missing, or has been missing?
I didn’t ask a lot of questions when Theo was venting on the phone yesterday.
I told him we would figure it out then called in The Brigade—which is The Cavalry plus Vivian’s husband, Walker.
I hesitated if I should include him in the text thread, though, because as an FBI agent, Walker took an oath, and we never want to put him in a position where he has to choose between the badge and his family.
I don’t have loyalty to a badge, but I sure as hell have a deep and nonnegotiable loyalty to my family.
Liam arrived before dawn this morning, flying in from God knows where, and I can hear the guest bathroom’s shower running upstairs. I saw him briefly this morning, but we haven’t talked about what’s going on with Savannah.
Jack walks through the front door after entering his access code and is carrying two boxes of cinnamon rolls, with Theo following him holding two trays of coffees from Java Jive. They set their haul down on my kitchen island.